Area Minister Was Aboard Last Flight From Cuba She Is Saddened For Sake Of The Poor There Who Will Suffer Without Aid.

February 28, 1996|by KATHLEEN PARRISH, The Morning Call

The Rev. Cynthia Crowner had no idea she was making history when she boarded the last plane out of Cuba on Monday.

It wasn't until the plane had landed at Miami International Airport that she was told by a television reporter that President Clinton had suspended all air charter travel between the United States and Cuba that afternoon. Over the weekend, Cuban missiles shot down two private American planes that had been flying off the island's coast.

"I didn't think the flight was that big of a deal," she said yesterday from her Upper Mount Bethel Township home. "The flight is only 45 minutes. Cuba is so close, but it's really far away."

Crowner, who is director of Kirkridge Retreat Center in Upper Mount Bethel, had been on a mission of peace. She had gone to Cardenas, Cuba, with 30 other Christians to improve communication between churches in the two countries. The mission had been a success, and Crowner, 43, had plans to return to the island and continue the dialogue that had been established.

But Clinton's directive temporarily closes the door to further relations with Cuba. "The consequences are going to be devastating to the Cuban people," who are desperately poor, she said. Crowner's group took over 600 pounds of medicine, food and school supplies.

Crowner's group didn't know the planes had been shot down until late Saturday when someone with a short-wave radio heard a broadcast from the British Broadcasting Company. Four anti-Castro Cuban-Americans had presumably been killed when Cuban MiG jet fighters shot down their Cessna planes over the Straits of Florida. The pilots had been volunteers with Brothers to the Rescue on a routine search for Cubans fleeing the island for the United States on small boats.

Later in the day, Clinton denounced Cuba's downing of the planes, calling it "barbaric and uncivilized," Crowning said. Another broadcast said Clinton was considering using force against Cuba.

On Monday, the group departed Cardenas for a three-hour bus ride to Havana. They got on the chartered flight without incident, and it wasn't until they had secured their seat belts that the pilot sensed trouble. "He said, `I got a feeling this could be one of the last flights out,'" she said. "He said he had received odd instructions from Miami" indicating this wasn't just a routine flight.

But they wouldn't discover that truth until they arrived at Miami where the airport was swarming with reporters hot after the story of their final trip.

Her first thought, she said, was of her husband and 5-year-old son, but then she recalled the many beautiful Cuban people who had touched her life with their generosity and gentle spirit. "We had really fallen in love with the people and Cuba," she said. The mission was "truly a moving experience. It's all so sad. We went to build bridges and instead walls are being built."